Judge acquits mom in MySpace case

A federal judge has officially acquitted Lori Drew, the Missouri mother accused of using MySpace to bully a 13-year-old neighbour girl who later committed suicide, reports The Register.

In July, US district judge George Wu, in Los Angeles, had tentatively overturned three misdemeanour counts against Drew of illegally accessing computers without authorisation.

Prosecutors had argued that Drew's violation of MySpace's terms of service, by creating a fictional account used to disparage the teenager, was tantamount to illegal hacking under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Thousands of people have signed a Downing Street petition calling for a posthumous government apology to World War II code breaker Alan Turing, says the BBC.

In 1952, Turing was prosecuted under the gross indecency act after admitting to a sexual relationship with a man. He killed himself two years later.

The petition was the idea of computer scientist John Graham-Cumming. He is seeking an apology for the way Turing was treated after his conviction. He has also written to the Queen to ask for a posthumous knighthood to be awarded to the British mathematician.

Research on teenage girls has shown that, when they play Tetris, it has a wonderfully positive effect on their brains, reports CNet.

The Mind Research Network, a non-profit organisation that examines brain injury and mental illness, decided to spend three months of its life and donations on watching what happens when teenage girls play Tetris.

The results reveal consistent practise on the pleasantly mind-numbing little game seems to have given the girls a thicker cortex, as well as creating more brain efficiency in other parts of their grey areas.

The world needs more innovative projects, like putting weather stations on cellular phone towers across Africa, to help it better predict the increased hurricanes, tsunamis, droughts and floods that climate change will bring, says Kofi Annan, reports The Associated Press.

The former United Nations chief was referring to a new system that brings more accurate weather information to farmers and fishermen in five African nations.

"We cannot hope to manage climate change unless we measure it accurately," Annan told 1 500 officials, diplomats and scientists on Monday, as a weeklong UN meeting opened on adapting to climate change.